


Cisco and the Dragon

by TheNarator



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik, The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Crack Fic, Fix-It, Fluff, Gen, SO MUCH FLUFF, dragon - Freeform, dragons in this fic operate on temeraire-verse rules, i just want cisco to have someone to look out for him okay?, sort of, this is basically the flash universe as if it used to be the temeraire universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2018-08-09 18:25:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7812433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNarator/pseuds/TheNarator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Cisco accidentally hatches a baby dragon, and gains a friend for life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cisco and the Dragon Egg

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Clowder of Chaos](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4024996) by [Hedgi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedgi/pseuds/Hedgi). 



> based on an idea i've been kicking around with hedgi. don't expect this to follow any coherent plot, it's basically as many cute things as i can think of plus a dragon inserted into any canon moments i think could use improvement. it may jump around a bit, so don't expect every chapter to follow directly on the last one.

Of course the damn dragon egg had to hatch when Cisco was alone in the lab.

It wasn’t even supposed to have hatched at all. It was a petrified egg, a relic from the days when dragons roamed the Earth, found in a cave in the cliffs outside Central City. Dr. Wells had gone to great lengths to acquire it, but the team set to studying it and the long-dead creature inside had been interrupted by the particle accelerator explosion and the egg had wound up among the various abandoned projects scattered around Cisco’s lab.

Cisco had been fascinated by dragons when he was a kid, and very disappointed to learn that there weren’t any more of them. In the old days, before their extinction, they had coexisted with humans, and remnants of dragon habitation were still evident in many ancient cities. It was said that dragons partnered with specific humans, and would protect their chosen partner with everything they had. Cisco had sometimes dreamed of being chosen by a dragon, being prized above all other humans by a powerful creature just because he was himself.

Still, there were no more dragons, and Cisco had resigned himself to a world without them when he’d been very young. He still liked having the egg around in his lab though; it was cool, and interesting, and reminded him that if a twenty ton creature could find a way to fly, then anything was possible.

Of all the potential impossible things that might happen, he’d never thought that the egg actually  _ hatching _ was on the table, but that would teach him to underestimate the Impossible.

“Oh no,” Cisco groaned when the the first cracks appeared in the egg. For a minute he froze, his brain stalling in the face of this unexpected turn of events. He was so not prepared for this!

Well, technically he was prepared for this. He’d read all about dragon hatchings during his Dragons Are Cool phase, and he knew -- vaguely -- what he was supposed to do. He was just in no way prepared to do it.

“Barry!” he called, running out into the hallway. He knew that dragons often imprinted on the first human they saw, and if anyone in STAR Labs deserved to have a dragon (be had by a dragon?) it was the Flash. No speedster came to his rescue though, and the egg continued cracking ominously.

Cisco ran back over to it, trying to think of a way he could slow it down, but as he watched a series of cracks near the top isolated an irregular shape in the shell, and the largish shard was then pushed upward by a small head.

The dragon, he could see as it came out, was a Latin American breed. It was covered in yellow and orange feathers, with a plume of red ones at the crown of its head, and a beak-like nose. Its eyes were a luminous yellow, with inky black slits for pupils, and they blinked curiously up at him from within the shell. It stretched out its neck, dislodging the shard from atop its head, and shook itself slightly, ruffling up its feathers.

“Beautiful,” Cisco whispered, half to himself.

“What?” asked the dragon, tilting its head to one side curiously. It shook itself, then stretched its wings, breaking more of the shell.

“You’re beautiful,” Cisco repeated more clearly this time.

The dragon buried its beak in the feathers of its breast as though shy, but then it began to scritch at the skin there, indicating that it had merely been after an itch. Without thinking Cisco stepped forward and kneeled before the dragon, then reached out a hand and began to run his fingers gently through the plumage. The dragon sighed softly, and Cisco pressed harder, running his short nails over the skin beneath the feathers. It was oddly soft, and the feathers were downy and fluffy, like pinfeathers but with more color to them.

“Thank you,” said the dragon, when Cisco withdrew his hand.

Cisco could have said any one of a thousand things. Out of all of them, he chose, “Are you male or female?”

The dragon thought for a moment. “Female,” she said decisively. “Are you the one who tells stories?”

Cisco went a little red. Okay, so maybe he’d spent more than a little bit of time thinking about the dragon egg. Maybe he liked to pretend that it  _ would _ hatch, and that he was just taking care of it until then. Maybe he’d liked to talk to it, when he had no one else to talk to, and maybe he’d read it one or two bedtimes stories. Maybe three. Four maximum.

“Um,” he coughed, “yeah, that’s me.”

The dragon made a little crooning noise in her throat. “And what is your name?”

“Cisco,” he replied. For some reason it did not occur to him to give the dragon his last name.

“And, what is my name?” she went on, in a tone of very clearly feigned indifference.

In hindsight, Cisco realized he could have named her Haven. He could have named her Serenity. He could have named her Paladin or  _ Maravilla _ or Puff the Magic Dragon or  _ literally anything _ besides letting his eyes slide onto the first object he saw and blurting out its name.

“Gusset plate,” he said, and then immediately slapped himself in the face.

“No,” he backpedalled, “your name is . . . your name is . . .”

“My name is Gusset Plate,” she said, in the same decisive tone she had used to tell him her sex. It was roughly the same, he thought glumly; it was a part of her now, a simple fact of her existence.

The last dragon on Earth, and her name was Gusset Plate.

“Do you have any food?” she asked. “I am very hungry.”

“Uh,” Cisco thought for a moment, then went to his desk drawer and pulled out one of the calorie-dense energy bars he’d made for Barry. It was bacon flavored, so it should be good for a dragon, right?

“Here,” he said, holding it close to her beak, and she snatched it up and gulped it down in one bite.

Dimly he realized the importance of what he’d just done. The giving of a name, and food, was important to a dragon. They only asked the person they imprinted on for a name, the chosen human that they were going to Look After with a capital L and A. Gusset (Gussie, he was going to nickname her Gussie) belonged to Cisco now, or rather he belonged to her, and if the books were to be believed there was nothing he could do about it.

Well, he thought as Gussie began to kick her way fully out of the shell, that wasn’t so bad. He’d always wanted to belong to a dragon, after all, although that had been a somewhat childish dream. Still, what was living in a city just teeming with the Impossible for, if not fulfilling childish dreams? He was going to get to cuddle with a dragon, and take care of her, and ride on her back. He was going to get to  _ fly. _

No, he decided, this was definitely more than  _ not bad. _ This was going to be awesome.


	2. Cisco and the Dragonet

Gussie, as Cisco was determined to call her, was getting rather distressingly big.

He’d known she would get bigger, obviously, but she was growing at an alarming rate and she showed no sign of stopping. She was already nearly as big as he was, and not even Barry, the strongest of them, could pick her up anymore. Soon she would be too big to fit through the door of his lab, at which point he really needed to have found a new place for her to live.

For the first few weeks of her life Gussie didn’t do much besides eat and sleep. When she was awake Cisco stayed in his lab with her to make sure she didn’t follow him around, and he’d been sleeping on a cot beside the nest of blankets he’d made for her. As she got bigger though she started to spend more of her time awake, and Cisco couldn’t live in his lab forever. She didn’t like the idea of moving, except if it was to somewhere Cisco spent more of his time, but the cortex was hardly any better and he doubted his landlord would be okay with having a dragon for a tenant.

This was to say nothing of her wing development, which Cisco was getting concerned about. She needed to stretch her wings if the muscles were going to develop properly, but doing so inside the lab was a good contender for Bad Idea of the Year. At some point she would have to practice flying, but that would require her to go outside, and once she got outside it might well be impossible to get her back in again. Thus, it was very hard to get her interested in leaving the lab.

“I want to stay with  _ you _ ,” she would insist every time Cisco brought it up.

“But wouldn’t you rather be somewhere with more space?” Cisco would protest.

“Not if it means I have to leave you,” she would retort. “I want to be where you are!”

“But what if you get so big you can’t stand up anymore?” Cisco would argue.

“Then I will lay down,” she would tell him, “and you can cuddle against my side and read to me.”

And that would be the end of the discussion.

Eventually Cisco realized he’d have to learn more about her breed at some point if he was going to take care of her properly. Caitlin was fascinated but Gussie, and took every opportunity to study her at every stage of development, but without knowing how the dragon was  _ supposed _ to look her job was a lot of guesswork. Gussie, of course, preened under the attention, and had total faith in Caitlin’s ability to take care of her, with or without help. She didn’t particularly care much about her own breed, and seemed to be enjoying the idea that she was the last dragon in existence a bit too much.

Still, the more they knew the better, so Cisco dug out his old dragon books.

She was a Latin American breed, that much was obvious by the feathers. They poured over the books, but most of the dragons they found either had more variation in colors than Gussie or were more serpentine. Gussie, Barry had noted, looked almost more like a gryphon than a dragon, a comment to which she had taken great offense. She hadn’t spoken to him for almost a week after that.

“I don’t like him,” Gussie had confided in Cisco one evening. “He is very arrogant and he doesn’t say thank you enough.”

“Barry?” Cisco had wondered, looking up from what he was working on. “He’s my friend though.”

“He doesn’t appreciate you,” Gussie had harrumphed, fluffing up her feathers.

“With friends sometime the ‘thank you’ is implied,” Cisco had told her seriously.

Gussie had grumbled at that, but grudgingly conceded that if Cisco liked Barry then there must be something good about him.

The search for Gussie’s breed continued though, even when it became Caitlin’s domain as Cisco had to return to other projects. Gussie discovered she liked having Caitlin read to her about the history of South American dragons and their role in human society, particularly when it came to the concept of an  _ ayllu _ .

“ _An_ ayllu _was the traditional form of a community in the Andes, especially among Quechuas and Aymaras,_ ” Caitlin recited one afternoon. _“Many_ ayllu _were presided over and protected by a dragon, and the dragons were very possessive of the humans in their ayllu. English and Spanish explorers often noted that it was as if the dragons had hoards of humans.”_

“What was the name for the head of an  _ ayllu _ ?” Gussie wondered.

“ _ The head of an  _ ayllu _ is called a  _ mallku _ ,” _ Caitlin read on,  _ “which means, literally, condor, but is a title which can be roughly translated as ‘prince’.” _

“Then Cisco is the  _ mallku _ of our  _ ayllu _ ,” Gussie pronounced, then settled her head back onto her folded forelegs in contentment.

“We have an _ ayllu _ ?” Cisco asked, perplexed.

“You and Caitlin are my  _ ayllu _ ,” Gussie informed him seriously.

“Not Barry?” Caitlin wondered.

Gussie thought for a moment. “He can come,” she conceded, “but only so Joe and Iris will come too.”

Gussie adored Joe, and by extension Iris. When Cisco had first told her he had to leave STAR Labs for the first time and she had to stay behind she had panicked and wrapped herself around him, sinking her small claws into his shirt and refusing to let go. She had stayed like that until Joe, thinking quickly, had approached her very calmly and explained that it was his job to protect Central City, and protecting Cisco was part of that job. He’d showed her his gun and how it worked, and explained about the police department, and Gussie had been delighted to know that there was not only Joe but whole buildings full of people devoted to Cisco’s protection.

No one bothered to correct the assumption.

Iris, who was as important to Joe as Cisco was to Gussie, she was given to understand, was naturally also included in Gussie’s affections. She’d never met Iris, but she wanted to, as she was certain that Iris would be a nice person if she was important to Joe. Joe fervently hoped the two of them would never meet, as he wanted to keep Iris out of the craziness at STAR Labs, but if Iris continued her interest in the Impossible things going on in Central City and Gussie could be persuaded to try flying there might not be anything any of them could do about it.

Of course, if they couldn’t convince Gussie to go outside there was no risk of her meeting Iris, but even Joe didn’t want that.

She was, thus far, fairly neutral about Dr. Wells. He had a certain scientific interest in her, but he was content to let Caitlin conduct the actual analysis, and hence kept his distance from the dragon. He was nice to Cisco, to Gussie’s approval, but he was quiet and unobtrusive about it, and she disliked that he paid more attention to Barry. The end result was that Gussie didn’t have particularly strong feelings for him, one way or the other.

Then, one afternoon as Caitlin read to Gussie from one of the books and Cisco worked on one of his projects, Caitlin came across some helpful information.

“Aha!” she cried as she turned a page, making both Gussie and Cisco flinch at the noise.

“What?” Cisco demanded, one hand over his heart.

“I’ve found Gussie’s breed!” Caitlin exclaimed in triumph

Gussie, who had been only half listening as she rested after a particularly large meal of raw ground turkey, perked up interestedly. Caitlin, sitting in a nearby chair, tilted the book to show her the picture, and Cisco craned his neck to see too. He had to admit that it looked exactly like a sleeker, glossier version of Gussie.

“ _ The- _ ” Caitlin squinted at the page, “ Quechua-word-I-can’t-pronounce, _ which the Spanish called the Maravilla. _ ”

“I knew there was a reason I didn’t name you that,” Cisco remarked.

“My name is Gusset Plate!” Gussie insisted, ruffling up her feathers. She disliked it whenever anyone questioned Cisco’s naming prowess. Even Cisco himself.

“Yes it is,” Caitlin soothed, stroking the top of Gussie’s head until she calmed down and settled back into her blankets.

“ _ The Maravilla _ ,” Caitlin read, “ _ was a firebreather- _ ”

“I can breathe fire!?” Gussie exclaimed. Immediately she took a deep breath.

“No!” Cisco said hurriedly, making Gussie pause. “No fire in the lab!”

Gussie grumbled, but settled down again, and Cisco went back to what he was making but kept one eye on her as Caitlin continued to read aloud.

“ _ It was an uncommon breed that kept mostly to the mountains _ ,” Caitlin went on. “ _ They were especially adept at quick maneuvering in the air, owing in part to their small size. _ ”

“I am small?” Gussie realized.

Cisco looked at her anxiously, wondering how she would take that piece of news. He had already developed an aversion to telling her things he knew she wouldn’t like, not because he was afraid of her, but because he hated seeing her sad. He couldn’t help but feel that if a dragon had once again graced the earth with her presence then the earth should be a place worthy of her, so he hated seeing her disappointed with  _ anything _ in the world around her. Thankfully she didn’t seem disappointed or sad right now, just curious.

“How small?” she pressed.

Caitlin scanned the page. “No bigger than an especially large horse, it says,” she reported.

“So, I can fit through doors still?” Gussie asked. “And, if I go outside, I can come back in?”

“Oh!” Caitlin gasped. “Yes, you can! I mean, some buildings are small and narrow, and you probably don’t want to go trying to fit into an apartment, but you can come and go from STAR Labs pretty easily.”

Gussie stood up and shifted her wings purposefully. “Cisco,” she called, “I would like to go outside. I think I should try flying.”

“Great!” Cisco replied, sharing an excited look with Caitlin. “Only, do you want to put this on first?”

He held up the thing he had been working on for both Gussie and Caitlin to see. It was a collar, made of interconnected nuts and bolts polished to a glossy shine, and decorated with ornamental gears and copper wiring.

“Anyone who looks at that will definitely know she belongs to an engineer,” Caitlin said approvingly.

“It should fit you now,” Cisco approached her, holding it out, “but I can make it bigger as you grow, especially since you won’t be growing all that much. It also has a tracking device in it so that I can always find you, or the others can always find us.”

He slipped the collar around Gussie’s neck, and she craned her head to examine it with one slitted eye.

“Shiny,” she assessed. “I love it! Thank you!”

Cisco grinned. “Dragons should wear pretty things,” he told her. “I . . . can’t afford a lot of pretty things-”

“You make pretty things,” Gussie interrupted him. “This is the prettiest thing I have ever seen, and I don’t think anyone could make me anything better.”

Cisco beamed at her.

“Now,” Caitlin clapped her hands, “shall we all go outside? I think Gussie should start with some stretches and short gliding hops on the ground before she gets too much elevation.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the overarching plot of season one is going to remain largely unchanged, but season 2 probably will not. the things i want to change in the first season are mostly isolated events, but the overall plot of season 2 was just a mess.


	3. Cisco and the Dragon Feathers

True to what Caitlin had read, Gussie did indeed stop growing.

She came to about the size of what the European powers would call a courier weight. She could carry two people on her back -- normally a manically grinning Cisco and a slightly terrified Caitlin -- but could still squeeze through most doorways. It was still impractical for Gussie to live in Cisco’s apartment though, or for him to live in his lab, so eventually they worked out a system. On days when Cisco worked until after dark, which was almost always, Gussie would fly him home and drop him off on his apartment building’s roof, and Barry would run Cisco over to the lab in the morning to get his car.

Not that Gussie only going out at night meant that a dragon was going to go unnoticed. Living in Central City might seem like it would buy them some leeway, but the people there had developed a sense for the impossible, and more important a taste for it. It wasn’t long until the papers and the blogosphere was blowing up about the mysterious flying object in the night sky, and before long Iris was covering that story as well as the Flash.

“She’s a good detective, Joe,” Barry pointed out. “She’s going to figure it out eventually.”

“When she does,” Joe glared, “it’s not gonna be because you told her.”

Barry never had an argument for that.

Iris was indeed getting closer to the truth. Cisco had just _happened_ to run into her outside his apartment one evening, taking a stroll in his part of town for no reason that she felt like discussing. Cisco thought she might have suspected him as being somehow involved, but there was nothing to do about that.

Still, if there was one thing to be grateful for, it was that Gussie had reached her full size. She had stopped growing, and barring an abrupt increase in caloric intake, she wasn’t going to get any bigger. She was now officially an adult dragon.

Cisco didn’t fully realize what ‘adult dragon’ meant, though, until he came into work one morning to find his lab covered in feathers.

“What the hell?” Cisco exclaimed, staring in horror at the downy mess that used to be his workspace.

“Oh good,” said Caitlin, coming up behind him, “she’s reached her adult molt.”

“Good?” Cisco repeated incredulously. He gestured vaguely at the room beyond the doorway they were standing in. “You call this good?”

Before Caitlin could answer there came a long, low groan from one of the far corners of the lab. Cisco and Caitlin glanced at each other, then hurried to the back of the room. There, curled up under her large pile of blankets, was Gussie.

If it hadn’t been obvious before it was certainly obvious now that she was the source of the feathers. She looked like a plucked chicken, bald all over but for a few ragged pin feathers still clinging stubbornly to her wings. She was shivering, and had tried ineffectual to pull some of her blankets around herself in the night; normally they just made a nest, but now she was huddled underneath them as best she could, which admittedly wasn’t very well.

All annoyance at the state of his lab fled Cisco’s mind. “Gussie?” he asked in concern, immediately moving to crouch beside her.

Gussie opened one luminous yellow eye. “Cisco?” she croaked.

“It’s me,” Cisco assured her, scratching around her beak where her soft, tiny facial feathers had been.

“I feel awful,” she complained, leaning into his touch. “Why is it so cold?”

“I’ll turn up the heat,” said Caitlin immediately, turning around and running for the thermostat on the far wall, careful not the slip on the feathers carpeting the floor.

“Aw, poor baby,” Cisco cooed, switching to rubbing the crown of her head.

Gussie crooned painfully and close her eyes again.

Cisco stood up and carefully collected the blankets Gussie had attempted to cover herself with. She opened her eyes just to glare at him as he yanked them off her, but she was clearly too tired to try and stop him. Once he spread them back over her, more fully this time, she tucked her head down against her shoulder and began breathing evenly.

“It’s probably a good idea that she sleeps as much as she can,” Caitlin remarked when she came back from turning the temperature up. “Growing all her feathers back isn’t going to be pleasant.”

“What can we do for her?” Cisco asked anxiously.

“I’ve been reading up on the care of domesticated birds during molt,” Caitlin told him.

“She’s not a parrot Caitlin,” Cisco said sourly.

“Do any of your dragon books say what to do for a molting dragon?” Caitlin wanted to know.

Cisco sighed and inwardly admitted that she had a point.

“We have to make sure her claws are trimmed,” Caitlin began, “because she’ll try to scratch herself as the pin feathers come in.”

“What do we do if she damages one?” Cisco asked.

“Pull it out,” Caitlin said decisively.

“No one’s pulling out my feathers,” Gussie interjected, lifting her head to glare blearily at the two of them.

“Not as long as you don’t scratch,” Cisco agreed. “We don’t need any more feathers around here.”

“What should we do with them all?” Caitlin wondered, picking up a long orange feather and holding it up to the light to examine it.

Cisco contemplated her for a moment, before taking the feather from her hand and holding it against her hair.

“I think I have an idea,” he mused, smiling at her confused expression.

***

“Hey!” said Iris, causing Caitlin to stop abruptly in the doorway to Jitters. She turned, trying not to look guilty, to find Iris staring openly at her.

“Yes?” Caitlin said innocently, batting her eyelashes.

Iris was silent for a few nerve-wracking seconds, but then she pointed to a spot above Caitlin’s right ear.

“Cool hairclip,” she said, smiling cheerfully.

“Oh!” Caitlin sighed in relief, one hand coming up reflexively to stroke the bundle of red and orange feathers clipped to the side of her head. “Thanks! Cisco made it. Do you want one? He’s got a whole bunch.”

“Sure,” said Iris slowly, and suddenly Caitlin didn’t like the gleam in her eye. “I’d love one.”


	4. Cisco and the Fire-Breathing Dragon

“Do you have to?” Gussie whined, her claws tapping on the hard floor as she trailed anxiously after Cisco.

“Yes Gussie, I have to,” Cisco said glumly. He was gathering up his things and packing up his bag, ready to head out early, a fact with which Gussie was not at all pleased.

“But why?” she asked. She bumped her head affectionately against his back, making him pitch forward into a table.

“Because he’s my brother,” Cisco told her, once he’d caught himself on the edge. “Because with Mardon in the pipeline I don’t have an excuse, because Caitlin volunteered to go with me and because it’s just what you  _ do _ , Gussie.”

“But you do not like him,” Gussie protested, “or any of them. Why do you have to celebrate the day he hatched?”

“It’s not that I don’t like them,” Cisco grumbled, not bothering to correct her on human reproductive methods. “It’s that they don’t like me.”

“I hate them already,” Gussie said, the feathers of collar ruffling up in agitation.

“Don’t hate them,” Cisco told her, scritching around the edge of her beak until she smoothed down her feathers. “They’re my family. They love me, even though they’re not always the best at showing it.”

“You deserve better,” Gussie insisted.

“I’ve got you for that,” Cisco reminded her, and Gussie preened. “Don’t worry,” he went on, giving her a weak smile, “I’ll have Caitlin with me and Dante will behave himself in front of a guest. Everything will be fine.”

***

Everything was not fine.

“How could you?!” Gussie demanded, pacing back and forth in agitation, tail lashing. “How could you let this happen?”

Barry sat in a chair in the middle of the cortex, shoulders hunched and head bowed. He looked miserable and a little afraid as he watched Gussie pace, peeking nervously at her from under his hair.

“I don’t know,” he said despairingly. “I’m sorry, Gussie, I had no idea who she was.”

“You were with him!” Gussie snapped. “You were responsible. How could you let him go off with a stranger?”

“I thought she was into him!” Barry defended. “He’d had a god-awful day and I thought he was going to get lucky!”

Gussie hissed steam at him, forcing him to speed out of his chair to the other side of the room and Dr. Wells to make a little noise of protest. She couldn’t breathe fire, not yet anyway, but she had just about mastered steam.

“I never should have let him go to that party,” Gussie lamented. “I should never have left him so exposed. And I should never have trusted him to you-” she shot a glare at Barry, “-at all!”

“It wasn’t my fault!” Barry protested, and Gussie rounded on him, but Dr. Wells felt it prudent to chime in at that point.

“Gussie,” he said tactfully, “hurting Barry won’t help us find Cisco. Nor-” he gave Barry a hard look “-will excuses, Mr. Allen.”

Barry had the decency to look ashamed of himself.

Barry’s decency aside, Dr. Wells was right. Arguing was not going to help find Cisco, but Gussie didn’t think that Barry would be much help either. She’d thought she could trust him and he’d let her down badly, and suddenly she wasn’t sure who she should be turning to. Without Cisco she felt desperate and alone, and no amount of shushing and petting from Caitlin would ease her worry. Her human, her companion, her  _ mallku _ was missing, and no one here knew how to find him.

Coming to this conclusion at last, Gussie turned and stalked out of the cortex. No one wanted to follow her, so she let herself out onto the roof and took off into the sky. It was still daylight, Cisco would have been mad at her, but she wasn’t going to find him by staying on the ground. She didn’t know where to begin looking though; the city was so very  _ big, _ and Gussie had never felt so small.

Eventually sheer instinct took her back to Cisco’s apartment. She landed on the roof, hoping against hope that Cisco would have somehow made his way back home and would be waiting for her there. He was not.

Someone, however,  _ was _ waiting for her on the rooftop.

“Oh my god,” said the woman who had been hiding behind the door to the roof, coming out of her hiding place as soon as Gussie had landed. She didn’t look familiar, like any of the people Gussie sometimes caught glimpses of on the street, but she had the same dark skin as Joe, and the same sharp, intelligent quality to her eyes.

Gussie cocked her head to one side. “Hello,” she said.

“Oh my god,” the woman repeated. “You’re a dragon. The flying shape was a dragon. Dragons are actually back.”

“Dragons are not back,” Gussie huffed. “I am the only one.”

“Sorry,” said the woman quickly, recovering herself. “My mistake.”

Gussie studied her carefully. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Iris,” said the woman, coming forward a little more.

“Joe’s Iris?” Gussie asked with interest.

Iris frowned. “Do you . . . know my dad?”

“Yes,” said Gussie. “He has told me a lot about you.”

Knowing how greetings were normally done between humans from watching movies with Cisco, Gussie delicately extended a foreclaw towards Iris. For a moment Iris only stared at it blankly, then she carefully reached out a hand and shook one of Gussie’s talons.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Gussie recited. “I am Gusset Plate.”

Iris blinked at her, then nodded solemnly. “I’m Iris West.”

“I am looking for Cisco,” Gussie informed her, trying to put on an air of power and authority, and not seem like she was worried. “Have you seen him?”

“No,” Iris shook her head. “I thought he’d come back here at some point, but I guess he got lucky with that woman last night.”

“Barry said the same thing,” Gussie said disapprovingly. “I do not see how going somewhere that is away from me with some woman is lucky, even if she did not kidnap him.”

“Wait, what?” Iris asked. “Did you say kidnapped?”

“Barry says that it was some woman named Lisa Snart,” Gussie told her. “She took Cisco, and her hatchmate forced him to build weapons, and now they are keeping him somewhere that is away from me where I cannot find him!”

Gussie’s feathers ruffled up in indignation of their own accord. Iris, to her credit, did not flinch or back away like Barry did when she fluffed herself up. Quietly Gussie decided that she had been right to include Iris in her  _ ayllu _ . Even without being Joe’s egg, Iris was a very good sort of human. Not easily startled.

Her resolve on that matter was greatly strengthened when Iris’s next words were, “I think I might know where he is.”

“Where!” Gussie demanded. “Where is he? How do you know?”

“I thought he might have something to do with the flying shape people are talking about,” Iris explained. “I didn’t want to approach him outright so I started following him. Last night he went to a bar with Barry, but left with a woman.”

“ _ Snart _ ,” Gussie hissed.

“Right,” said Iris. “I followed them, but I figured Cisco had just picked her up and they were going back to her place.”

“So you know where they went!” Gussie concluded excitedly. “Tell me!”

Iris stepped forward, reaching out a hand towards the dragon. Gussie held still, letting Iris get closer until the human could run her fingers along that shiny collar Cisco had made for her. Gussie fought the urge to croon mournfully. She would have Cisco back soon.

“Actually,” said Iris, walking around to Gussie’s flank, “I think it’s better if I show you.”

***

“I’m telling you,” Cisco said for the umptheenth time, “if you don’t let us go you’re going to regret it.”

Rory ignored him, just like both Snart siblings had been ignoring him for the past day. He had to admit, it sounded a little hollow coming from someone who was handcuffed to a dining room table, but he still thought they could have at least reacted. He was, after all, the Flash’s best friend. Well, second best friend. Third at the very least.

He didn’t mention that they needed to be a lot more afraid of his fire-breathing dragon than his superhero friend. He didn’t think that would do much for his credibility.

“ _ If they were going to let us go they would have done it by now _ ,” Dante said, in Spanish, from the other side of the dining room table.

Cisco gave a noncommittal hum, his mind elsewhere. He hadn’t bothered to tell Dante about Gussie either, knowing full well that Dante either wouldn’t care or wouldn’t believe him. There was no point in telling him now; it wouldn’t calm him down and it wouldn’t do them any good to try and plan around Gussie’s arrival, which was bound to be incredibly chaotic. If anything it might make Dante worse, knowing that she might very well rescue Cisco and leave him behind with the Snart gang. Honestly, Cisco had no idea what she would do.

The only thing he was sure about was that she was coming. Cisco knew damn well Gussie was going to find him, if she had to burn down all of Central City to do it; it was just a matter of  _ when _ she found him. He hoped that Caitlin, Barry and Dr. Wells would be able to keep her under control, but the longer he was gone the more anxious she would get until not even her other pet humans could hold her back.

“Seriously,” Cisco called to Rory again, “you’re going to regret it. You’re gonna wake up tomorrow going, ‘man, I wish I’d let that kid go.’ I’m telling you the truth here.”

“Shut up,” Rory tossed over his shoulder, then downed another burning shot.

Cisco opened his mouth to say something else vague and hopeless when suddenly Dante began kicking at the table leg.

“Dante,” Cisco whispered, “Dante!” but he kept going until the wooden leg broke and the table went careening sideways. Now armed with make-shift club Dante stood up and made for the supervillain, aiming a wide swing at Rory’s head.

Rory caught the chair leg easily, then punched Dante in the face, sending him sprawling across the expensive carpet.

With nothing else to do Cisco balled both hands into fists and took a hopeless swing at Rory, which ended with him on the ground and the pyromaniac kicking him repeatedly in the stomach. With the breath being forced out of him he didn’t even have time to cry out between kicks, and he’d never thought he’d be so relieved to hear Leonard Snart’s voice.

“Mick, calm down!” Snart yelled, and Rory stopped kicking Cisco. Lisa took him by the coat and dragged him away, saying something about dinner in that seductive voice of hers that would haunt Cisco’s nightmares for years to come.

Snart then turned his attention to Cisco. “I like you kid,” he said, then launched into a fauxlisophical tangent about what he presumably thought were the similarities between himself and Cisco. Cisco played along, hoping he might actually make Snart listen to him, and eventually the supervillain came to his point.

“The Flash,” he said, “who is he?”

Cisco opened his mouth to deny everything, when suddenly there came an enormous crash and clattering from above their heads.

_ Oh no, _ Cisco sighed inwardly.

“What the-” Snart aimed his gun at the ceiling, watching wild-eyed as dust was shaken loose from the crown molding.

“Lenny!” called Lisa, running back into the dining room with Rory hot on her heels. “What was that?”

“That,” said Cisco impatiently, “is the reason why you should let me and my brother go. Now.”

Rory aimed the heat gun at Cisco while Snart kept the cold gun pointed high. “What’s out there?” he demanded gruffly.

“My,” Cisco winced, knowing how this was going to sound, “dragon?”

Before any of the criminals in the room could contest that statement, Gussie shrill voice emanated from above.

“Cisco?” she called, “Cisco are you there?”

“I’m here!” Cisco yelled back, then turned to Snart. “Please,” he hissed, “you’ve got to let me go! She’ll bring this house down if you don’t!”

Already there was a scrabbling of claws on tiles and wood and sheetrock; clearly she was making quick work of the upper floor.

Snart pulled Cisco roughly to his feet and dragged him toward the door, uncaring of the fact that Dante was getting up hurriedly and following behind them. He kicked the front door open and shoved Cisco out into the bright daylight.

“What the-” Dante began, stumbling out after him.

“Gussie!” Cisco yelled. There was a huge hole in the roof of the house, and as he watched Gussie poked her head out of it.

“Cisco!” she said excitedly, climbing out of her own wreckage and gliding to the ground. There was very clearly someone on her back, but Cisco couldn’t make them out at a distance. She landed in front of him and immediately hooked one foreclaw around him, using it to pull him in close. He abruptly found himself up against a solid wall of feathers, a very bird-like crooning going on above him and a very large and wickedly sharp beak nuzzling him as he attempted to crane his neck to look at who she was carrying.

“Hi Cisco,” said Iris West, swinging her leg over so she could slide down from Gussie’s back.

“Hi, Iris,” said Cisco in confusion. Iris landed smartly on her feet, then turned to face the house.

Eventually Gussie stopped nuzzling Cisco and let him back up enough to see him properly.

“Where are they?” she hissed, tail lashing.

“Now Gussie,” Cisco held up his hand is supplication, “just don’t-”

“You have the kid!” Snart called, like the raving idiot that he was, “now beat it!”

He, his partner and his sister were all clustered around the front entrance, clearly unaware of the picture they presented. They had their guns out, like that would do them any good, and Snart was aiming his cold gun at Gussie.

“You,” Gussie growled, low and dangerous. “You took my Cisco!”

Maybe it was a reflex, or maybe it was that he realized he wasn’t getting out of there without a fight, but Snart fired the cold gun.

Gussie opened her mouth and expelled a jet of flames.

The two forces met in mid-air, heat encountering cold and burning it away as easily as an ice cube over a bonfire. The flame kept going, engulfing the cold gun and then the man holding it, sweeping over all the criminals who had conveniently arranged themselves within the line of fire. Cisco smelled burning flesh, heard Lisa screaming and Rory, well, roaring, and then the flame was gone and three very singed criminals were left standing on the front stoop.

“Gussie!” Cisco cried cheerfully, partly as a distraction and partly because he was genuinely proud. “You breathed fire!”

“Does that come as a surprise?” Iris wondered.

“Well we knew she  _ could _ do it,” Cisco told her, loud enough to keep Gussie’s attention on him while the Snarts and Rory made their escape. Snart was dragging his partner behind him, the pyromaniac unwilling to take his eyes off Gussie. Lisa’s hair was still on fire.

“But she hadn’t done it before?” Iris guessed, just as loud.

“Nope,” Cisco replied. “It’s her first time. I’m very proud.”

Gussie preened, tossing her head back and forth vainly.

“Should we go after them?” Iris whispered to Cisco.

Cisco shook his head. “I think the Flash will handle them. As soon as I can find my phone.”

***

“What annoys me,” said Cisco over the roar of the wind, “is that I have a fire-breathing dragon, and  _ you _ got to ride her into battle before I did!”

Cisco, Iris and Dante were all packed tightly together on Gussie’s back as she flew the three of them back to STAR Labs. Barry was dealing with the Snart gang, Joe was doubtlessly preparing his explanation for lying to Iris, and Dante had been struck just a little mute by his ordeal, leaving Cisco and Iris to talk amongst themselves.

“Think of it as an apology,” Iris instructed, “for not telling me about her.”

“Yes,” said Gussie suddenly, turning her head slightly to address Cisco. “Why  _ didn’t _ you tell her about me? She is a very good sort of human and I would like to have her in our  _ ayllu _ .”

“ _ Ayllu _ ?” Iris asked, perplexed.

“Her little hoard of humans,” Cisco explained. “Welcome to the club.”

“I do not see why Barry did not tell her he was the Flash either,” Gussie went on, and Cisco’s heart sank. “She is very useful, and he is not very clever. He should really have her around more.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Iris insisted.

“Keep it up and I’m going to think you like her more than me!” Cisco huffed.

“Never,  _ mallku _ ,” Gussie crooned. “Never, never.”

Iris turned to Cisco. “ _ Mallku _ ?” she asked.

Cisco shook his head. “It’s a long story.”


	5. Cisco and the Flying Dragon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have some fluff, i'm exhausted

“Are you ready?” Gussie called over her shoulder, to where Cisco was seated on her back.

“Ready,” Cisco replied.

“Are you certain?” Gussie asked worriedly, craning her neck back to see him.

“I’m positive,” Cisco assured her.

“You’re strapped in properly?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Cisco said in exasperation, tugging on the harness strap fastened around his waist just to be sure.

The harness, his newest present to Gussie, was a network of interconnected metal and leather straps, which fitted around her body. It allowed Cisco to tether himself and a small payload securely to her back, without fear of either of them sliding around or falling off.

“But-” Gussie began.

“Gussie,” Cisco said, “we’ve flown without the harness before, remember?”

Gussie harrumphed, but still did not take off from the roof of STAR Labs. She had, of course, flown both Cisco and Iris back to to the lab after the Snart Gang Debacle completely without incident, but that was before he’d shown her the pictures of dragon harnesses in the history books. They were mostly for army dragons who carried large numbers of people; almost any breed of dragon was capable of keeping their back reasonably level in flight, enough that a few people could stay on quite easily even with nothing to hold on to.Gussie, however, had taken one look at the book and been suddenly horrified that she’d ever let Cisco into the air without one, and insisted he make one immediately before the two of them went flying again.

“I have been neglecting you!” Gussie had whined mournfully. “Imagine _me_ neglecting you! Barry is the one who neglects you!”

“I’m fine Gussie,” Cisco had laughed. “Really, I-”

But Gussie had not wanted to hear excuses for her own behavior. She insisted that Cisco construct himself a harness before she would take him up again, and withstood many measurements and fittings to make sure he got it perfect, no matter how obnoxious Cisco tried to make them.

“We are going to try difficult maneuvers today,” Gussie argued. “I am not even sure I want to anymore, it is very cloudy out and a bit chilly, and the wind is all-”

“Quit stalling!” Cisco cut her off. “Even if I fall, which I won’t, I know you can catch me.”

“How do you know?” Gussie said waspishly.

Cisco thought for a moment, then suddenly hit upon an idea. “Are you questioning my engineering prowess?” he asked, trying to sound genuinely offended.

Gussie fluffed up the feathers of her collar. “Never!” she insisted, peering around to look at him again. “Never never!”

“Then prove it,” Cisco challenged. “Let’s _go_ and see what this baby can _do_!”

Gussie considered for a moment, but apparently she couldn’t think of a response to that because in the next moment she was throwing herself off he roof of STAR Labs.

Falling from a very tall building while lashed the back of a dragon was better than any ride Cisco had ever been on. His stomach dropped, his heart leaped and he kept a firm grip on the harness as he drifted vaguely up and away from Gussie. She let herself fall maybe ten stories before flaring out her wings and catching an updraft, letting the wind carry both of them high into the sky. For a few minutes they just flew, making lazy circles around the lab, but eventually Cisco called to Gussie over the wind.

“Lean right!” he shouted.

Gussie angled her body as she flew, tilting to the right until she was almost flying sideways. Cisco’s weight strained against the harness straps, but they held strong.

“Lean left!” he yelled.

Gussie changed angles, turning until Cisco was dangling just as precariously off the other side.

“Everything’s okay!” Cisco called to her. “Let’s try a loop!”

“Are you certain?” Gussie asked anxiously.

“I’m _certain_!” Cisco insisted. “Let’s go!”

Gussie beat her wings a few times in order to gain height, then angled her body upward. Cisco felt the world shift crazily as Gussie tilted up, up, until she was flying backwards, upside down in midair. Cisco’s hair stood on end, the harness straps straining under the weight of his body, but as with both of the tilt tests everything stayed precisely in place.

“Are you alright?” Gussie wanted to know once she was flying the right way up again.

“Awesome!” Cisco replied. His heart was pounding in his chest, his stomach protesting, but adrenaline and endorphins were coursing through his system and he felt practically high.

“You wanna go again?” Cisco offered excitedly.

“Do we have to?” Gussie asked in something like despair.

Once they were safely back on the roof again, Cisco began removing the harness.

“Should you be doing that?” Gussie wondered as Cisco unbuckled the straps from around her legs. “It is very comfortable, and who knows when I might need to carry you somewhere. Shouldn’t we leave it on?”

“You wouldn’t want to wear this ugly thing all the time, would you?” Cisco wanted to know.

Gussie examined the plain brown leather, as though pondering its aesthetic value for the first time. “Maybe you could wrap some shiny wire around it?” she suggested.

“I’ll make you another one for everyday wear,” Cisco promised. “I’ll make it pretty, like your collar, and this one can be for . . . combat purposes.”

“It could just be a _prototype,_ ” Gussie suggested, emphasizing her new vocabulary word. She’d just learned it the other day.

Also she was doubtlessly dubious about the idea of Cisco going into a combat situation.

“The next one will be prettier,” Cisco said simply, skillfully refusing to give up his combat gear idea. Already he was planning the new harness; he’d use copper wire, obviously, as it was closest to gold, but if he encased it in glass tubing . . .

“And it will be shiny?” Gussie asked eagerly.

Cisco grinned. “It’ll be so shiny you’ll glow in the dark.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> stay tuned for gussie enacting firey vengeance upon eiling and harry, not necessarily in that order.


	6. Cisco and the Loyal Dragon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you're expecting more fluff then you might want to brace yourselves because this is where the story gets angsty.

If you’d told Cisco Ramon five years ago that one day he’d be making the rounds of every butcher in Central City buying them out of ground turkey, he’d have laughed in your face. Nobody liked turkey, which was why people only ate in once a year. It was dry and gross and it cooked weirdly, and only weird people ate it if given the choice to eat something else.

It was also, as it happened, the cheapest type of meat to buy, barring undesirable cuts of chicken. So if you needed enormous quantities of raw meat on the regular but didn’t have the money to slaughter a cow every week, ground turkey was the way to go. Not for the first time Cisco wondered how this had become his life as he paid for the seventeen and a half pounds of ground turkey that was all the butcher had left at the end of the day. He’d already hit up every other butcher in the city, so this was his last stop.

“What do you need all this for?” asked the woman on the other side of the counter, who looked like she could break Cisco in half without much trouble.

“I’m one of those people that likes to spoil their pets,” Cisco told her honestly. He did not mention that he had only one pet, that it was more like he was her pet, and that she happened to be a dragon.

The woman gave him an understanding smile and Cisco tried not to imagine the collection of vicious dogs he suspected she was picturing, perhaps somewhat reminiscent of her own. He walked out of the shop, laden with turkey and thinking about what he’d recently read about Chinese dragons eating cooked meat rather than raw. He wondered how he would theoretically cook this much turkey without it drying out, his brain immediately beginning to construct a device similar to the revamped slow cooker he’d constructed for his mother, and he only dimly noticed the unmarked black van parked directly outside.

He noticed it more however when the side door slid open and four men in full combat gear leaped out. Instinctively Cisco dropped the turkey and put up his hands, but this turned out to be the wrong thing to do. Immediately two of them grabbed him, kicking his legs out from under him and dragging him toward the van. Cisco yelled, but there was no one nearby, and he found himself hoisted inside by strong hands, unable to even struggle to free himself. He yelled again even as the door slid shut behind them, but then there was a crackle of electricity and a searing pain in his side.

The last thing he saw before he blacked out was the word “Army” on the chestplate of one of his attackers.

***

One of the things that Gussie was thankful for was that Cisco was not generally given to being late.

Cisco liked being at the lab. He loved working, he loved the people he worked with, and he loved spending time with Gussie. The lab was literally his favorite place to be. He did not stay away for long periods of time if he could help it. He did not come in late. And he certainly did not do either of those things without telling someone.

“Where is he?” Gussie asked no on in particular as she paced agitatedly around the cortex.

“He’s usually here by the time I leave on patrol,” Barry said, sounding somewhat concerned himself. He was already in his Flash suit, but he was waiting on Cisco before going out.

“He’s not answering his phone,” Caitlin said, holding up her own phone demonstratively. If Gussie squinted she could see a lot of outgoing text messages, but none in response.

“I’m going looking,” Gussie announced, striding purposefully towards the door.

“Bad idea,” Barry was suddenly standing in her path. “Remember what happened last time you went off looking for Cisco?”

“Yes,” said Gussie. “I found him.”

“You found Iris,” Barry corrected, “who still hasn’t forgiven me for lying.”

“That,” Gussie snapped, “is your problem.”

She made to go around Barry, but he was suddenly in her way again. She tried to go the other way, but once more she found him directly in front of her.

“Barry’s right,” Dr. Wells piped up, drawing Gussie’s attention off Barry and onto him. “We don’t even know that anything’s wrong, and it’s not yet fully dark. The last thing we need is more blogs like Miss West’s talking about sightings of dragons.”

“I do not care,” Gussie’s tail lashed. “I want to find Cisco.”

“I may be able to help with that,” said a voice from the doorway.

All three of them turned, to find a man dressed in an army uniform standing just outside the entrance to the cortex. Immediately Barry’s mask was on and he was racing to place himself between the soldier and the rest of the room’s occupants, and Gussie dropped into a crouch, preparing to spring at the man if he threatened anyone.

“I presume General Eiling sent you,” guessed Dr. Wells, turning his wheelchair to face the newcomer. “What information do you have about Mr. Ramon?”

“I can take you to him,” said the soldier, not looking at Dr. Wells or at Barry, but rather at Gussie over Barry’s shoulder. “But this offer is one time only, and only for the dragon.”

“You’re nuts if you think-” Barry began.

“Deal,” said Gussie, without hesitation.

The soldier nodded, turned, and marched off down the hallway.

“Gussie you can’t!” called Caitlin, getting hurriedly up and running after Gussie as she took off after the soldier.

“I am going to find Cisco,” Gussie said. She did not see why Caitlin seemed so upset. “I will bring him back here, and everything will be alright again.”

“You honestly think they’re just going to let you?” Barry easily kept pace with her as Caitlin began to fall behind. “You think-”

“I know they will let me, because I am much bigger than them and can breathe fire,” Gussie explained patiently. “They will not have a choice.”

“I’m coming with you,” Barry insisted.

“The offer only stands if we go alone,” the soldier said over his shoulder.

“Stay here,” Gussie ordered Barry. “I will get Cisco, and we will be back soon.”

***

Gussie flew behind the soldier’s car as he led her out of the city. It was not yet entirely dark, so Gussie could keep track of the car even at the height she had to maintain to not be seen. She had very keen eyes, which Cisco said came of having ancestors that lived on mountains and had to see human bandits coming from a long ways away. Sometimes the man changed direction unexpectedly, and sometimes he even went back the way he had come, but eventually they made it out of the buildings and into the forest.

It was harder to track the car through the forest, with its dense trees, but there was only one road to follow, and that was where the trees were thinnest. She followed the road all the way to a wall, which surrounded a collection of small, squat, ugly buildings. A gate in the wall opened to admit the car, but Gussie simply flew over the wall and landed in an open space just past the gate.

“Where is Cisco?” she demanded immediately, as the soldier stepped out of his car.

“All in good time,” said a voice Gussie had not heard before. She turned, to see an older looking man with greying hair and deep wrinkles on his face. He was dressed like the soldier who had brought her there, but the soldier stood at attention when he approached.

“Who are you?” Gussie asked as the man approached her, tail lashing. “Where is Cisco?”

“I’m General Wade Eiling,” the man introduced himself, “and your friend Cisco is inside. I’ll bring him to you, once I’m certain you understand your position.”

“You should understand your position,” Gussie hissed angrily. “I am very big and I can breathe fire. You should give me what I want.”

Eiling, of all things, chuckled. “I thought you’d say that.”

Suddenly, from everywhere at once, there came a horrible piercing scream. Gussie flinched, knowing Cisco’s voice when she heard it, but she could not tell where it was coming from.

“Cisco!” she called, turning circles as she tried to pinpoint the source of the screaming. “Cisco, where-”

The screaming stopped, and Gussie whirled to face Eiling.

“Where is he!” she snapped. “If you have hurt him-”

“I have hurt him,” Eiling admitted, surprisingly her, “and I’ll hurt him again. Over and over until you understand your place, monster.”

“I’m not a monster,” Gussie said, “I’m a marvel, and you-”

The scream came again, louder and more pained than before.

“Cisco?” Gussie screeched, turning this way and that as she tried to tell where it was coming from. “Cisco, I am coming, I am-”

“You are not in any position to correct me,” Eiling interrupted once the screaming had stopped. “I can hurt your precious Cisco as much and as often as I like, and the only way you can stop me is by doing what I say.”

“Where is he?” Gussie asked. Asked, rather than demanded, because as much as she did not want to admit it, she was afraid. She was afraid for Cisco, and what it was that was making him scream. She did not want to hear the sound of Cisco screaming every again.

Eiling smiled, cold and cruel, then held up a small black box to his mouth. “Bring him out.”

The door to the building behind Eiling opened, and out came a trio of soldiers. In the center of the group was Cisco, one of them holding each of his arm and the third one walking slightly in front of the other two. His stumbled as they dragged him outside into the open space, coming to a stop a few paces behind Eiling.

“Gussie!” Cisco said in surprise when he saw her.

“Let him go!” Gussie howled. “Let go of him, you-”

“Shut up!” Eiling shouted, at a surprising volume for something of his size.

The soldier who had been at the front of the procession turned around. He looked at Eiling, and when Eiling nodded the soldier drew back his hand and punched Cisco with what looked like a considerable amount of force. Gussie screeched but stayed in place, not daring to breathe fire at the soldier for fear of hitting Cisco too.

“Will you do what I say?” Eiling asked. Cisco shook his head at Gussie, eyes wide.

“No!” Gussie snapped petulantly.

Eiling nodded to the soldier again, and he drew back his other hand and hit Cisco again.

“Stop!” Gussie’s feathers were fluffed up as high as they would go.

“Will you do what I say?” Eiling asked, louder this time.

“Never!” Gussie flared her ruff at him, but Eiling did not back down.

This time the soldier took something from his belt, and when he placed it against Cisco’s neck Cisco screamed again.

“Stop it!” Gussie clawed at ground but did not attack, still afraid of hurting Cisco. “Stop it, stop it!”

“Will you do what I say!” Eiling shouted.

“No!” Gussie insisted, “I will not, I will-”

The soldier pulled his gun from its harness and pointed it at Cisco’s head. Cisco stared down the barrel of the gun and swallowed, then looked at Gussie and shook his head again. _No._

“Will you do what I say?” Eiling asked, voice quiet and deadly calm.

Gussie hesitated a moment, looking into Cisco’s fearful, pleading eyes. There was only one possible answer.

“Yes.”

***

Gussie was not back soon.

They waiting for over an hour, but Gussie did not return and no one received a call or text from Cisco. At Dr. Wells’ insistence Barry went out of patrol, but nothing could take his mind off his missing friend. This would be the second time Cisco had been kidnapped and Barry hadn’t been able to do anything, hadn’t even tried to do anything, to save him. He couldn’t help but feel like a horrible superhero, and a horrible friend.

“Any sign of them?” Barry asked once he had come to a stop in the cortex.

“Not yet,” Caitlin shook her head.

Barry stripped off his suit and changed back into normal clothes in the blink of an eye. “What about the news, any word about a fire breathing dragon going on a rampage?”

“The news networks and blogosphere are all quiet,” Dr. Wells told him.

“You know,” said Caitlin suddenly, “Gussie does have a tracker in her collar.”

“Is it active?” Barry demanded, racing over to stand next to Caitlin. “Where is it?”

Caitlin tapped at her tablet a few times, then turned it to display a map of Central City. The map zoomed in on the forest to the west of the city, until a collection of buildings surrounded by a thick wall came into focus.

“There’s an army base just outside the city,” Caitlin told him. “The tracker’s sigal is coming from in there.”

“Perhaps we should-” Dr. Wells began, but Barry was back in his Flash suit and out the door before he could finish.

***

The army base was surprisingly easy to get into. The gate was open when he arrived, no guards stationed on the wall spotted him, and there did not seem to be anyone in the courtyard created by buildings on three sides and the gate on the fourth. Everything was quiet, and under cover of darkness Barry stopped and wondered which of the three buildings to look in first. The central building seemed to be the biggest, probably the place where Eiling might hide a captive dragon, and the massive front door was ajar. It was almost too easy.

Exactly why it was too easy became apparent when the courtyard was flooded with light.

“Hello Flash,” said Eiling, stepping out of the shadows to stand squarely in Barry’s path. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Barry get out of there,” came Dr. Wells’ voice in his earpiece.

“Where are Cisco and Gussie?” Barry demanded, ignoring Dr. Wells to focus on Eiling.

Eiling signaled to someone behind him. “Let out the beast,” he barked.

From the shadows of the open doorway to the central building, out stepped Gussie. Her wings drooped, her feathers were flattened to her skin, and her head hung down as though in shame. She was not wearing the collar Cisco had made her, but rather a heavy black harness that looked to be made of kevlar.

“Gussie,” Barry called urgently, “let’s get out of here! We’ll find Cisco-”

“Fire!” shouted Eiling.

Gussie opened her mouth and let forth a jet of flames. Barry just barely made it out of the way without getting scorched, and she followed him with the fire until he was backed into a corner of the courtyard.

“Gussie!” Barry cried frantically. “It’s me! I’ve come to help you-”

“You can’t help,” said Gussie shakily, “I have to do what he says.”

“No you don’t!” Barry argued.

“Fire!” Eiling shouted again.

Gussie inhaled deeply and then fire was pouring once again from her mouth. Barry ran in the opposite direction this time, and thankfully by the time he reached the opposite corner she was out of breath.

“Gussie, why?” Barry asked plaintively.

“Because he’ll hurt Cisco if I don’t,” Gussie groaned pitifully. “You don’t know . . . you don’t know . . .”

“Fire!”

***

“Barry’s vitals are dropping,” Caitlin announced, bent over her workstation. “I think he was hit.”

“Caitlin,” said Dr. Wells calmly, “would you be so kind as to take a van and get as close to the base as you can? I think Barry made need a ride home after this.”

“But-” Caitlin started to protest.

“I’ll handle things here,” Dr. Wells assured her.

Thus mollified, Caitlin turned and left the cortex at a run, leaving Dr. Wells alone at the comms.

***

The comms were fried.

Everything was fried.

Barry could feel his bare chest knitting itself painfully back together, but nothing could repair the damage to the front of his suit. Gussie’s fire was hot enough to melt titanium, and certainly hot enough to burn away even Cisco’s reinforced tripolymer fabric. He struggled to sit up, but suddenly he felt hot breath wash over his face.

“I’m sorry,” said Gussie as she positioned herself over Barry, pinning him down. “But they will hurt Cisco.”

“I understand,” Barry said hoarsely. “You have . . . . to protect . . . “

“Finish him!” Eiling commanded.

“No!” Gussie howled, looking over her shoulder at Eiling.

Eiling lifted a radio to his mouth and said, “Bring him out.”

There was a sound of something being struck and then a punctuated cry, and Cisco stumbled out from around the corner of the central building. His hands were bound behind him, and he was flanked by two soldiers carrying assault rifles. He had a black eye, a split lip, and what looked like an electrical burn on his neck.

“Cisco!” Barry yelled.

“Cisco!” Gussie howled.

“Enough!” Eiling barked. “Finish him, or Ramon dies!”

One of the soldiers raised his gun and pointed it at Cisco’s head. Gussie turned back to Barry. Barry closed his eyes.

In hindsight Barry wished he had not closed his eyes, because then he might have understood what happened next better. There was a whooshing sound to his right, a cry of alarm from the direction of the soldiers, and then Cisco’s voice above him screaming for Gussie to stop. His eyes popped open to see Cisco standing beside Gussie, his arms thrown around her neck, face pale and sobbing into her feathers.

“What . . .” Barry began in bewilderment, but he was ignored.

It took Gussie a moment to realize what had happened. That Cisco was no longer with the soldiers, a gun to his head, and that he was instead beside her. Once she did realize it however she rammed her nose into Cisco’s stomach, crooning joyfully and nuzzling him fiercely.

“Cisco!” she managed, in between wordless noises of affection.

“I’m ok!” Cisco said, over and over. “I’m ok, I’m ok, I’m-”

Suddenly Gussie wrenched away from him, one foreclaw pushing him toward Barry. Cisco looked stunned for a few seconds, until Gussie turned to face Eiling.

“Gussie no,” said Cisco, face pale and horrified. “Gussie stop, Gussie-”

Gussie did not respond to him. She spread her wings and leaped, gliding the distance between where she had been standing and where Eiling was now backing towards the open doorway in alarm. Cisco shouted for her to come back, and Eiling screamed for her to stand down, but Gussie had decided on her next course of action and she would not be dissuaded.

It was oddly quiet in the courtyard as Eiling’s first scream split the still night air. His second scream was a bit gurgly, owing to the fact that Gussie’s front claws were embedded in his lungs. His third strangled, soft scream was cut abruptly short as Gussie bit into his neck, and that was the last sound General Wade Eiling ever made. His body made a few more noises, sickening squelches and visceral tearing sounds as it was reduced to its component parts by sharp talons. In the end though, when Gussie was through, there was silence.

***

They’d had a hell of a time cleaning Gussie off.

Eventually they’d had to just take her down to the parking garage and spray her down with the hose. It dislodged a few feathers, but there was no other way to get all of the blood off of her before she went upstairs. There was simply no getting all of it off the roof where she’d landed, and the hallway where she’d tried to come inside would have to be power washed as well, but eventually they got her clean enough for Cisco’s lab.

Caitlin treated what wounds Cisco had and checked him over for further injuries, of which there were none. Cisco did not say anything about going home, and Gussie did not mention it either. Barry also didn’t want to go home, and in the end only Dr. Wells returned to his own house for the evening. Iris and Joe were called to spend the night as well, and Gussie slept soundly with all of them cuddled against her side. Cisco lay with her head in his lap, and when she awoke during the night with a mournful croon he scratched at her feathers until she could lay her head down again.

The next day people had to go to work however, so Joe and Iris and Barry had to leave. Caitlin went back to her own lab, to her own work and her own projects, and Gussie and Cisco stayed in the workshop. Cisco tried to work on his machines, but his hands were shaking a bit too much, and in the end he and Gussie ended up watching an old Charlie Chaplin film projected on the wall.

“Why is this funny?” Gussie asked, despite the fact that she was laughing also.

“Timing,” Cisco said simply, wiping tears from his eyes. “It’s all about timing.”

Gussie nuzzled him affectionately, then laid her head in his lap. She could only watch the film out of one eye like this, but that was alright.

“Gussie?” Cisco asked, voice quiet.

“Yes?” she replied, just as quietly.

“You shouldn’t have attacked Barry,” he said.

“Eiling would have killed you if I had not done it,” Gussie told him, knowing the truth of it deep in her bones. “I could not have let him hurt you.”

“You can’t hurt people just because-” Cisco began, but Gussie cut him off.

“Yes I can,” she said firmly. “If it will keep you safe I will burn this city to the ground. You may tell me not to if you like, but I will not obey you if it puts your life at risk.”

There was a pause where Cisco did not say anything, and Gussie waited nervously for his reply. Then his hand came up to stroke the feathers on top of her head.

“I know,” he admitted, “and I know that’s in your nature, but I have to at least try to stop you.”

“You have tried,” said Gussie, as though humoring him. “If you want to stop me from hurting people to protect you, then I suggest you stop being kidnapped.”

“I’ll try,” Cisco said, and it came out somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.

“Good,” Gussie concluded, then closed her eyes and nuzzled into Cisco’s belly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a very happy birthday to hedgiwithapen, without whom this story probably wouldn't exist.


End file.
